Tag Archives: Documentary

Capsules

CAPSULE: VISITORS (2013)

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DIRECTED BY: Godfrey Reggio

FEATURING: None

PLOT: A series of black and white shots, mostly of human faces but also of abandoned buildings, hands, and landscapes, set to a new composition by Philip Glass. Still from Visitors (2013)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Though a curious experiment for sure,Visitors is too dry, slow and minimal to make the list of the best weird movies of all time. It’s got the “weird” part down; I’m less sure about the “movie” part.

COMMENTS: Visitors is composed of about 75% shots of human faces, captured by a slow motion camera, staring into a monitor with hard-to-gauge expressions for about a minute at a time. To break up the monotony there are also shots of abandoned buildings, disembodied hands, a gorilla, a lunar surface, and so on—all beautifully photographed, but seemingly inserted at random. Now, the human face is fascinating in its infinite variety and its singular expressiveness, but I confess that, like a normal person, I found this exploration boring. Five minutes of this parade of faces would have been enough, fifteen minutes would be pushing it, but ninety minutes sets the movie up as a challenge. It’s not that there isn’t a great deal for the eye to appreciate, or that there are no surprises to be found, especially in the film’s final moments; it’s just that a little bit of this goes a long way. You might compare Visitors to looking at an exhibition at an art gallery, except that at the gallery the observer decides whether he wants to invest his attention in the portrait of the young Asian girl or the gorilla or the cypresses in the swamp, going at his own pace; here, director Godfrey “Koyaanisqatsi” Reggio selects the image and dictates in what order and for how long we gaze at each installation. If there is sense to the progression of images, it’s lost on us. The idea of a film where we simply peer at people’s faces while they stare back at us has a certain experimental purity; but why break it up with the shots of the abandoned amusement park? The flock of seagulls? The piles of garbage? (The Louisiana swamp that figures heavily in the film’s last third is a spot Reggio loved from his childhood, which subverts the notion that there is some sort of objective, non-personal meaning to the flow of images). There is a disconnect between the shots of isolated faces followed by abandoned buildings that might suggest some sort of looming post-apocalyptic future, but basically the audience is left on its own to find any thematic relevance in the imagery. Unlike Reggio’s previous films, such as Koyaanisqatsi (where the imagery consistently critiques the hectic pace of modern life), the material of Visitors seems like a bunch of pretty pictures inserted because each of them looked cool in isolation, not because they resonate with each other. In this way Visitors is a legitimately Surrealist documentary. It is also much, much slower in its progression than Reggio’s already stately previous work. Overall, Visitors is a noble experiment, but it would be hard to call it a successful one, except on a shot-by-shot basis.

Philip Glass’ slow, deep, moody score adds additional artistic heft to the project, and serious orchestral music fans may consider Visitors as nothing more than the music video for Glass’ latest composition. It’s also worth nothing, although I doubt Reggio would agree, that Visitors may actually play better on home video than in theaters. At home, you can walk away into the next room to read your email or unload the dishwasher, let Visitors play in the background, and check back every now and then just to assure yourself that nothing about the movie has actually changed.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… weirdly beautiful film, eerie in its complicated simplicity.”–Maryann Johanson, Flick Filospher (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: HARRY DEAN STANTON: PARTLY FICTION (2012)

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DIRECTED BY: Sophie Huber

FEATURING: , , , Sam Shepard, ,

PLOT: An impressionistic pastiche covering the career of cult character actor Harry Dean Stanton, with terse interviews, conversations with collaborators, film clips, and lots of folksinging from the subject.

Still from Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction (2012)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Stanton is a weird dude. The fact that your subject is weird, however, doesn’t necessarily make your documentary weird. Also, the ratio of insight to folk singing here is unfavorable.

COMMENTS: Partly Fiction is a portrait of a man of few words who refuses to talk about certain topics, including, among other things, his relationship with his mother and father. His answers to the simplest questions can be frustratingly obtuse, and followed by awkward silences. “How would you describe yourself?” “As nothing. There is no self,” Stanton replies. “How would you like to be remembered?” “Doesn’t matter.” Now, while on a very refined and abstract level I have some agreement with Stanton’s philosophical outlook, the fact is his clipped, koan-like answers don’t make for a great interview. He adopts an approach that might be described as “enlightened-aggressive”; although he surely realizes that the audience is looking for insights into Stanton the actor, not Stanton the folksinging guru, the craggy-faced icon is insistent on forcibly edifying viewers and shoving wisdom down their throats. He is far more interested in serenading us than in talking about his career, delivering oddly phrased versions of “Blue Moon,” “Blue Bayou,” and “Everybody’s Talking at Me” in a weak, wavering voice. (He turns out to be a better harmonica player than a crooner). To be fair, he does open up a little bit more as the doc continues, but he seems always guarded, always intent on preserving his enigma—we only rarely sense we are peeking through cracks in his facade, and then only when he chats with old friends.

To fill up the time when Stanton isn’t talking or singing, director Sophie Huber provides numerous films clips, including many classics from his iconic role as a wounded amnesiac who wanders out of the desert in Paris, Texas and as an amped-up speed-snorting repossesser in Repo Man, along with smaller parts in bigger movies like Cool Hand Luke and Alien. Huber also follows Stanton as he cruises the night, smoking cigarettes in the back seat as the crew ferries him about L.A., tailing him to Dan Tana’s for cocktails (tequila and cranberry juice) and a smoke break with the bartender (whom Stanton obviously knows well). Tributes from Wim Winders, Sam Shephard (who recommended Stanton for his breakthrough role in Paris, Texas), and most importantly David Lynch, who visits for a cup of coffee and with whom Stanton lets down his guard, add some additional meat, but the documentary still has trouble filling out its meager 75-minute running time. The impressionistic pastiche survives solely on Stanton’s (not inconsiderable) charisma. There’s not much insight to be had here, but Harry Dean does magnify his image as a grizzled, mystical outsider, and fans of that persona should eat it up.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“You still leave impressed at the way Stanton fiercely protects the aura of mystery that makes him such an indelible onscreen presence.”–Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE END OF TIME (2012)

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DIRECTED BY: Peter Mettler

FEATURING: Peter Mettler (narration)

PLOT: Documentarian Peter Mettler interviews people from various walks of life about their thoughts on time, using poetic footage of lava flows, particle accelerators, and digital mandalas as visual backgrounds.

Still from The End of Time (2012)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: While The End of Time is way, way outside the average filmgoer’s wheelhouse, despite a few acid flashback moments, it’s not really weird per se. It is also somewhat overshadowed by similar visionary non-narrative documentaries like Samsara and the Koyaanisqatsi trilogy, more expensive productions that achieve more spectacular vistas.

COMMENTS: The subjects of The End of Time include a 1960 record-setting skydiving free-fall from over 100,000 above the earth, lava flows on a volcanic island, and a squadron of ants bearing away a grasshopper’s corpse. None of this has much to do in particular with time, and yet it all does, because time is inescapable (despite the documentary’s occasional implication that time is an illusion). Rather than talking about time per se, the narration begins with the words “in the beginning there were no names,” and as the movie slowly flows and curls about like magma it returns periodically to what appears to be that central point: ultimate reality is inexpressible, and language (and abstract concepts like “time”) are our feeble (and possibly counterproductive) attempts to freeze and analyze the endless flux of reality. At least, that’s my view of Mettler’s position; the documentary is ostensibly time-neutral, giving equal weight to all experiences. Speakers are never identified by name or credentialed, and so the doc gives the same weight to the particle physicist’s opinions as those of the guru, the hermit, the artist colony potter, and a woman I’m guessing is the director’s grandma. Some of the earnestly proffered opinions, particularly the New Age-y ruminations from the granola crowd, are easy to mock, but please resist the urge. It is so rare for people to actually discuss grand, abstract concepts in movies in an irony-free way that it’s incredibly refreshing, and I’d hate to discourage future explorers from setting out towards similar territory.

Philosophy aside, the cinematography (by Mettler, Camille Budin, and Nick de Pencier) makes End of Time worth your time. Mettler draws visual parallels between the circular construction of particle accelerators and Hindu mandalas, between a corpse carried on a funeral bier and a meal carried away by ants. In between monologues Mettler throws in pastoral passages of eye poetry: stars dissolve into snowflakes, and we see a cat in a field quietly perceiving time in his own way, then camera draws back to show the same footage on a big screen television in an editing studio. The most remarkable scenes are the mesmerizing flows of magma from an active volcano; it’s amazing how quickly the outside edges cool to a black crust while the inside still glows red hot, and the entire mass creeps along, knocking down trees and incinerating the ferns that grew up since the earth’s mantle last leaked to the surface. The final act is a lysergic digital freakout presumably representing “the end of time,” beginning with the extinction of the sun, which turns into a bunch of glowing green mandalas and segues into a cosmic Malickian montage. The overall result—abstract and meandering, sometimes deep, sometimes pretentious, beautiful but frequently slow as molasses—is definitely not for all tastes. At times the movie gets a little too trippy-hippy-dippy for its own good, leaning too far to the “far out, man” end of the profundity spectrum. But you have to give Mettler much credit for his courage in thinking big and tackling deep questions that would terrify less ambitious filmmakers.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“There’s a touch of the acid mindset here, certainly: towards the end, many of Mettler’s images come together in an abstract montaged freak-out that might have made a very effective credits sequence, but feels too trippily ‘heyy-wowww’ when incorporated into the main body of the film. At moments, The End of Time come perilously close to a tone of nebulous new-age amazement, a touch too Koyaanisqatsian for comfort.”–Johnathan Romney, Film Comment

Guest Reviews

JODOROWSKY’S DUNE

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Guest review by Terri McSorley

“I wanted to make a film that would give the people who took LSD at that time the hallucinations that you get with that drug, but without the hallucinations. I did not want LSD to be taken; I wanted to fabricate the drug’s effects. This film was going to change the public’s perceptions.”

Jodorowsky's Dune (2014)This is a quote from the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, directed by Frank Pavich. Director and writer has a small but extraordinary film resume which includes Fando y Lis, El Topo, The Holy Mountain, and Santa Sangre. The quote could apply to any of these four films. I am a great admirer of this quartet of one-of-a-kind masterpieces. Jodorowsky’s unmade version of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel “Dune” went as far as a film could possibly go pre-camera; the proof lies in a monster-sized tome of ideas and sketches that looks to be a few thousand pages thick. Jodorowsky worked with Jean “Moebius” Giraud to create storyboards for every scene of the film. The sketches from this tome were used throughout the documentary. The interviewees include Michel Seydoux (the unfinished film’s producer), Jean-Pierre Gibon (co-producer), (director—Bronson, Only God Forgives), (director–Hardware, Dust Devil), Devin Faraci (film critic), Chris Foss (artist), H.R. Giger (artist), Amanda Lear (‘s muse), Diane O’Bannon (wife of the late Dan O’Bannon, who was going to supervise Dune‘s special effects), Christian Vander (musician—Magma), Gary Kurtz (producer—Star Wars trilogy, The Dark Crystal), Brontis Jodorowsky (Alejandro’s son, who acted in El Topo and Santa Sangre), and the centerpiece of the documentary: Alejandro Jodorowsky.

We are given a brief background on Alejandro’s career: his work in the theater and his first three feature length films. El Topo was so successful that he was given a million dollars to make The Holy Mountain. The Holy Mountain‘s success prompted a union with producer Michel Seydoux. Seydoux asked the director, if he could make any film, what would it be? Jodorowsky answered, “Dune.” Jodorowsky had not actually read Frank Herbert’s “Dune” and only knew of it because a friend had told him how fantastic it was. The director’s screenplay made many changes to Herbert’s story, including a significant alteration to the finale. This was definitely Jodorowsky’s Dune.

“I was raping Frank Herbert, raping like this. But with Love.”

With the script written, Jodorowsky needed to find the people who would help make it happen; “spiritual warriors,” in his own words. The talent that was going to be involved included many of my own favorite artists, actors and musicians. Dan O’Bannon was to supervise the special effects, artist Chris Foss would have designed the project’s spaceships, and H.R. Giger would have realized the Gothic planet Harkonnen. Pink Floyd would have created music for planet Leto, while Magma would have done the same for the Harkonnen. Jodorowsky’s cast was to be as follows: David Carradine as Duke Leto, Brontis Jodorowsky as Paul Atreides, Salvador Dali as the Mad Emperor, Amanda Lear as Princess Irulan, Mick Jagger as Feyd-Rautha, and  Continue reading JODOROWSKY’S DUNE →

Capsules

CAPSULE: SICK BIRDS DIE EASY (2013)

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DIRECTED BY: Nicholas Fackler

FEATURING: Dana Altman, Ross Brockley, Nicholas Fackler

PLOT: A cast and crew of drug addicts/imbeciles travel to the heart of Central Africa to partake of a rare psychedelic that is rumored to cure drug addiction. Once they arrive, they encounter spirituality, mysticism, and their own bloated egos.

Sick Birds Die Easy


WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: There is nothing truly abnormal about what befalls our plucky adventurers in this docu-something about interlopers in the Garden of Eden (aren’t we all?). Director Nicholas Fackler positions himself as a Colonel Kurtz of visual storytelling, but emerges from this breezy jungle nightmare looking more like Dennis Hopper’s shell-shocked photojournalist.

COMMENTS: At the heart of Sick Birds Die Easy is a message that speaks to the heart of the human experience. Unfortunately, for all concerned, that message is “I dunno either, man.” It’s a propaganda movie about the benefits of iboga, a plant that even the film doubts the real merits of; a drama about Nick’s annoying friends trapped in a Why-Can’t-We-All-Just-Get-Along crisis; a harrowing thriller about being lost in the jungle with a load of nitwits surrounded by danger; and an aloof, self-loathing indie comedy with an admittedly killer soundtrack. And while these are all interesting angles, when none of them in this movie seem to lead anywhere or are expressed with any conviction or belief in anything. Ironically, it ends up as a film about a film getting lost.

In a voice that was made for documentary narration, Nick Fackler spins a tale in the opening moments about the grandiose ideas he plans to tackle: spirituality, primordial magic, alternate reality, and an Apocalypse that will reveal the next direction of human consciousness. The next minute destroys any hope that these ideas will ever be explored seriously in this film again, as musician Sam Martin drunkenly opines about being a gay baby who needs a diaper during the opening credits. The picture never sets up a goal or a narrative that is satisfyingly fulfilled in any way; even the main quest, which involves getting Nick’s drug dealer Ross to the Pygmy tribe’s Fwiti ritual so he can be cleansed of his drug-loving ways, is neither embarked upon meaningfully (they all bring drugs into the jungle!) or brought to a satisfying conclusion.

Perhaps, in a post-modern context, this film is a deconstruction of expectations, narrative, or reality itself. From the press material, and even from the shaky-cam film festival Q&As these stoner-philosophers sit for, it is difficult to determine whether or not the events of Sick Birds Die Easy were of a non-fictitious nature, especially considering the insane and the insanely conveniently cinematic way the movie unfolds. It’s chock full of gripping indie trailer moments and feats of such uncanny luck that would make Las Vegas blush with envy. It could be construed as a deconstruction of the documentary genre as a whole. But if that is the case, and all these loose ends are really missiles pointing at the human need for resolution in art, then I still have a problem with Sick Birds Die Easy, because it has also deconstructed joy, hope, and optimism in the name of questionable art. I hope that this is a film merely without a brain, and not without a heart.

Sick Birds, for all the questions it raises, is a well-constructed documentary (?) with a good narrative engine that drives along at a humming pace to the beat of some good tunes by Sam Martin. Nick Fackler has an eye for what intrigues people visually, and he creates a vista that gives us a grand look at his burgeoning capabilities as a filmmaker. But intellectually, this experience suffers from too many shallow, mildly psychopathic, or perhaps merely bleak ideas, placed behind the veils of “spirituality,” “alternate realities,” “apocalypse”, and other trailer buzzwords. Watch Sick Birds Die Easy, like our intrepid dopes going into the jungles of Africa, at your own risk. And leave your common sense at the door; you won’t need it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“So what’s Sick Birds Die Easy really about? To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. I’m still completely on the fence as to whether I can take the movie seriously as a documentary, or not.” -Amy R. Handler, Film Threat